In times of pain, a soul can die.

And take from the world wings that should fly.

Yet even where darkness has left its mark.

All it takes to set a blaze is the smallest of spark.

Redeemer's Prayer Verse 3

She didn't know how long she'd been out. Seconds? Minutes? Hours?

Eyes having found the strenght to crack open ever so slightly, Cassandra found herself battling against senses that felt twisted and confused. The atmosphere engulfing her was darker; heavy and oppressive, as though it sought to crush her. Her ears were filled with a sound as though wind rushed by, although the air was still. Everything around her seemed near while at the same time, distance and almost otherworldly.

Her sister, still unconscious, laid unmoving. The elf struggled to rise, but stumbled. And the Pelsan man she had skewered in the shoulder attempted to claw his way across the floor, loyalty and scincere concern evident in every struggling pull of his body with his remaining good arm as he sought to reach Sheala's side.

All emanated a luminous and foggy auras of dull white that danced in an invisible and dark ether. Meanwhile, the light from the body of the fallen otaur had faded to non-existence; snuffed out like an unwanted candle.

The dancing blue lights she had seen were gone, and the fires from the urns previously illuminating the chamber under the mountain were now void. Instead, the otaur statues ringing the cavernous opening now possessed the orangish and fiery hue about them instead.

While taking stock of her surroundings and how they had shifted, Cass noticed two distinct figures who had not been in the chamber moments earlier. Or, if they had been, they were invisible to her eyes before now.

Where her sister's sword laid stood two luminous forms brighter than all the others. Breath catching in her throat, Cassandra's mind latched on to them and wouldn't let go of what she disbelievingly saw. She remembered them. As though they were from her childhood dreams. Dreams she'd long ago ceased to dream. Because of the pain and the sleepless nights those dreams would cause.

One was a man. Tall, rugged, and a little past his prime, but still in fine shape with a rust-colored beard. The latter partially concealed the unrelenting assertion of authority upon his face. A cool demeanor that could scold or bring comfort at moments notice.

The other was a woman wearing a familiar green dress, her gaze down and sullen while partly turned away; looking at where Sheala rested, silent, upon the floor.

Both of them were like phantoms and not something real that could be captured and held.

"Mother?" Cass called out, believing she recognized them beyond any doubt. "Father?"

The male spirit drew a deep breath that indicated his deepest desire to speak. And then he paused without using it to say anything at all. His silence, a muteness so bitter to Cassandra's ears, spoke volumes instead.

Her emotions swelling up, Cassandra started crying restrained tears amid their silent response. All while she continued to stare at them and begged for acknowledgement. "Please say something. Please?"

It was then her father's spirit broke his empowered silence. "What would you like us to say, Cass? Because I warn you that anything your mother or I have to say to you in this moment will likely pain you greatly." As his daughter's face contorted into a gawk of horror and surprise at those words, his next were like knives into her heart. "Your mother and I are disappointed in you. Very much disappointed."

"No." Cass dropped to her knees, realizing at that moment she wasn't in her own body, but next to it. Glowing with the same white, misty fog as the others, a wound on her head seeped blood as her unconscious form laid against the feet of one of the otaur statues. Emotions pent up for so many years flooded out in her next burst of words. "Why, Father?"

"Why? You ask as though you do not know? Because you've done terrible things, my daughter. Am I to believe that you are unaware?" He then softened his accusing tone that had grown in volume, "My sweet, special little girl. What has become of you?"

Limbs weak, Cass not so much allowed her tears to fall without confinement as they just came out of her on their own accord. "Everything I've done," she said with a fractured voice. "Everything I've become has been to avenge you and Mother."

"Avenge us?" Now it was the feminine spirit's turn to speak. "How? By aiding those that are our enemies? By destroying our allies? By laying waste to innocent people? Women and children alike without compassion? This is not what I tried to teach you."

"It-It was the Rebellion that slaughtered you." The claim rolled out of her so fast that Cassandra couldn't have stopped it if she wanted to. And she didn't, desiring only to plead her case to her long dead parents. "They were far from innocent. Each one of them—murderers. Or complicit with murderers. I saw it. I saw their mark upon the arrows that pierced you."

"A misreading of the truth is what you have done, daughter."

"No." Cassandra's mind pulled at itself, trying to harden her heart against the claim and refusing to accept it. "I know I can trust my own eyes." She stared down the apparitions, her thoughts quickly forming a twisted reason behind what was happening. "This is some sort of trick! You are not my Mother and Father! My parents would never—"

Her father's spirit took a decisive step forward. So powerful was that singular motion that it interrupted the accusation Cassandra had wanted to hurl without abandon.

"Enough." His utterance of the lone word and how he spoke it—how it was firm and gentle at the same time—told Cassandra that she must comply. "I vow to you, this is no trick, daughter. And be assured your Mother and I are well aware of all that you have done. The unspeakable horrors you have perpetrated."

Wilting under the accusation and the sorrowful anger in her Father's tone, Cassandra's weeping only intensified. "I did what I did for you."

"You sided with evil, choosing to assist Lord Hedric and Lady Noranda in obtaining the Tear of Earoni. Thus plotting to grant a Blood Lord and a fallen angel the power to cast the world into darkness and undo the heavens above."

"I wanted you back—I wanted the Tear to bring you back." Cassandra shook her head. "I don't care what Hedric and Noranda do with it beyond that."

Her mother turned away from her daughter, as though she couldn't stand to look at her. "I can see that you gave no thought to the consequences of this."

"Lady Noranda told me it could bring you back."

Her mother's spirit sighed. "Believe me when I say that if there had been a way to undo all this? For us to come back to you and your sister? We would have found that way before now. As it is, this is all we are. Spirits bound to this blade."

"What are you saying? That she lied to me?"

"The wicked tend to lie, Cassandra," her mother confirmed. "The truth is not their ally. As such, only by lying and manipulating can they gain compliance from those with good hearts. People like you."

"Your mother is right," her father added his voice once more. "You do have a good heart, daughter. So good that, at this moment, I am sure it is breaking into a thousand tiny pieces from grief and pain knowing that we can not come back to you as anything more than this. You can try to hide it behind a tough exterior, but I can see what is going on in your soul."

"How?"

Her father's spirit raised an eyebrow, at first questioning if an answer was warranted. "Because, Cass, I am your father. And you are my daughter. You cannot hide anything from me."

Cassandra looked down and away, sniveling like she was a little girl once more being terrified by the prospects of scary elves and courtesy of her sister's playful jests. There was so extreme she wanted to say to her Father about how sorry she was for disappointing him. But the thoughts and feelings writhing inside while gnawing her apart would not form into syllables, much less the words appropriate enough to be spoken. No matter how long she sat there in silence wanting them to.

In her distraction, her mother approached. Hand under her daughter's chin, the spirit in the green dress drew Cass's eyes up to meet her own as she kneeled with her youngest child. The two shared a silent moment—her mother looking at her in a way able to partially sooth her daughter. And while Cassandra tried to control her emotions ruled by fear and shame.

"What must I do?" Cassandra asked the question burning within her. "To make it right?"

A full breath in and then out steadied the forthcoming response from her mother. "You know what you must do. So why do you ask?"

"Because—" Cassandra turned away again. "I don't think I'm strong enough." Her eyes closed as she couldn't even bear to look at the ground without feeling as though its silent stones too were judging her. "I've never been strong enough."

"Strength was never your weakness," her mother said while her voice contained a gentle and doting chastisement of Cassandra's self-pity. "Your weakness has always been your love. Love of your father and I. And most importantly, love of your sister. Everything you did, no matter how wrong it was, you did out of that love. I understand that. Your father does too. And as wrong as some of those things were, I cannot hate you for that, my daughter."

"I don't love anyone," Cassandra croaked. Her thoughts pulled uncontrollably to those of Deran, his body hemorrhaging blood on her bed after being sliced open by her swords in a rage she could not cage. "I don't love anyone," she repeated. "I can't. Even though I've tried."

"Do not underestimate your greatest strength, Cass. It is what redeems you."

Cass returned her gaze to her mother, and after a long silence and an understanding look, nodded. "And I know what I have to do to make everything right."